Here is a little path winding away
among the rocks, pressed flat by the bare feet of generations of Indian
women. Let us follow it. It leads to a feeble spring of clear water,
which flows from the bare hillside into a scooped-out rock basin, and
close beside it is a rude wooden cross, adorned with fading flowers.
Perhaps we have met on the path a damsel with peasant dress and bare
brown feet, who passes us with downcast eyes, bearing upon her shoulder
a huge earthenware _olla_ of water of quaint form--a figure such as in
the land and time of Jacob and Rachel might have graced the sterile
landscape. The cross has been placed there as a mark of gratitude for
the existence of this frail water supply. Indeed, in these
Spanish-American countries--as Mexico, Peru, and others--the conditions
and atmosphere of everyday life often remind us of the scenes and
colour of the Bible narratives. The absence of the conditions of modern
life--railways, factories, the scramble for commercial wealth--induce
this. The quaint and primitive methods of travel, the long distances,
the sterile landscape, and the simple dress and pastoral life of the
people, all contribute to this environment. Amid the haze of some long,
shimmering road as we ride along a figure approaches. We do not _see_
him; we "behold him while he is yet afar off," and if he happens to be
a native friend he does not greet us with a handshake, but "falls upon
our neck." Here in these wilds what typical places there are where the
traveller might "fall among thieves" in some rocky defile or on the
desert's edge! Here men are close to nature. They are unconsciously
tinged and imbued with its picturesque and chequered incident, as was
the great singer of Israel. Nature is ever present in Mexico, and man's
struggle with her is his daily task. The wilderness is ever before his
eyes, and circumstances often compel him to fast there in the
wilderness, whose broad, arid bosom does but accentuate the valleys
which intersect it, flowing veritably with milk and honey, and which we
ofttimes behold from some Pisgah's mountain of the rocky Sierra. The
"patriarchal" condition of life, moreover, as regards family life,
"handmaidens" and natural sons, are reminiscent of Biblical story.
Nature will not admit too rigid regulations against increase of
population in Mexico: Hagar and Ishmael dwell in every hamlet!

Just as the religion of the Mexican _peon_ causes him to people his
daily surround